A Few Good Replacements For Diseased Phlox And Coneflowers
- On November 06, 2012
- By Meleah
- In Perennials, Plant Spotlight
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I’ve nearly finished putting the gardens to bed for the winter. As I worked, I actually did go through with my pledge to rip out all those diseased coneflowers and phlox that have been limping along in agony for years. Aster yellows, powdery mildew; I’m as tired of looking at that ick as they are of having it. So they’re out of their misery now, and so am I.
Phlox paniculata ‘Purple Kiss’
The upside is, I get to buy new plants next spring to take their places. I can live without coneflowers, but I would miss phlox in the garden. So I hunted around for some truly standout mildew-resistant varieties. Below is some information on the ones that got the best reviews from fellow master gardeners and local garden designers.
Phlox Flame™ Series: The naturally dwarf cultivars in the Flame series have outstanding mildew resistance. Available in a wide array of colors, these phlox have an attractive bushy habit that’s nicer looking than that of other phlox varieties. Zones 3 – 8.
Read More»A Clarification on My Scotts Miracle-Gro Post
- On October 02, 2012
- By Meleah
- In Annuals, Container Gardening, Fertilizer, Perennials, Soil
- 0
I’ve been out of town on vacation, so I’m behind on posting. I’m working on something that should be up later today or early tomorrow. But, first, I need to apologize for making an error in my recent post about Scotts. In that post, which you can read here if you missed it, I talked about how the company pleaded guilty earlier this year to charges that they had used insecticides known to be toxic to birds, fish and other wildlife on two brands of bird seed they were selling. They did this to help protect the seed from pests during storage. The products have been recalled, but not before more than 70 million units were sold over two years.
Credit: Free Nature Pictures
http://www.freenaturepictures.com/misc-birds-pictures.php
In my post I explained what happened and how Scotts ended up pleading guilty and being fined. But I got one part wrong, which someone from Scotts pointed out to me, so I am correcting my mistake, which I should. I wrote that Scotts tried to cover up the fact that they had coated the seeds with toxic insecticides by falsifying EPA documents. This is not correct. The company’s falsification of government documents was actually part of a separate legal issue going on at the same time involving Scotts illegal sale of pesticides that were not registered with the EPA.
I confused the two issues when researching my column and thought the fabricated paperwork had to to with the bird seed. I do apologize for that mistake. I know how important it is to get your facts straight on these things. I also know it’s easy to glaze over and tune out when talking about legal stuff. But these issues with Scotts are serious and the company’s products are everywhere. As gardeners, we need to stay informed so we can make safe, healthy choices about the products we buy and use in our homes and gardens.
Read More»Scotts, the Maker of Miracle-Gro, Behaves Shittily—Again
**NOTE**A correction to this piece was made in my October 2, 2012 post.
You might recall that earlier this year Scotts Miracle-Gro pled guilty to charges that they had illegally used insecticides known to be toxic to birds and wildlife in two brands of bird seed: “Country Pride” and “Morning Song.” According to prosecutors, the Ohio-based company knowingly coated the seed with these insecticides because they wanted to protect it from insects pests during storage.
Prothonotary Warbler
Credit: Juan Pons
Millions of bags of toxic seed were manufactured and sold over two years. And even warnings about the toxicity of the pesticides from two of the company’s own employees did not stop them from selling it. The products were recalled in spring of 2008 and, eventually, Scotts was fined $4.5 million.
This incident certainly isn’t the first time Scotts has behaved in a manner that has surely earned its executives a nice, toasty seat in hell. But it’s a good one to call out when talking about the company’s history of asshattery, including making it nearly impossible to buy a freakin’ bag of soil that doesn’t include its products. What are they up to now? you ask.
Check out this post by Amy Stewart on Garden Rant: “Dear Scotts: Just Try, One Time, Not to be So Shitty.” It’s about how Scotts’ lawyers nabbed and quickly trademarked a phrase that garden writer C.L. Folinari came up with as part of a goodhearted campaign to get people excited about gardening and growing different types of plants.
Oh, and Scotts also went public in June about their $200,000 donation to Restore Our Future, the super PAC that supports Mitt Romney. The donation made Scotts one of the first public companies with a well-known brand to contribute directly to an election campaign following the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision on campaign funding.
Scotts has made its corporate character very clear. It’s up to gardeners like us to do the same.
The Lasagna Method: Get Rid of Weeds and Sod the Easy Way
If I could somehow go back in time and give my new-gardener self just one piece of advice, it would be this: Use the lasagna method when starting a new garden bed. Of all the tough gardening chores, removing old weed-infested sod (or any sod, really) rates right up at the top of the This-Really-Bites list. Oh, how I wish I had known that I could just smother stuff rather than wrestle it out of the ground—the sheer force propelling me off to the chiropractor to fix my aching back once again.
There is no such thing as maintenance-free gardening. But gardening doesn’t have to be on a mission to kill you either. This is the beauty of the lasagna method. The goal is to keep light and, to some extent, air and water, from reaching the weeds and turf. There are no exact rules for this process, so I’ll explain what I do and you can modify the strategy as you see fit.
Read More»Has Aster Yellows Turned Your Plants Into A Pack Of Mutant Monsters?
- On August 17, 2012
- By Meleah
- In Annuals, Herbs, Organic Gardening, Perennials
- 1
Do your echinacea (coneflowers) look like mutant, green monsters from an alien universe? Mine do. And that’s because a disease called aster yellows is running rampant in Minnesota this year. The disease is caused by a phytoplasma, a microscopic bacteria-like organism that makes its home in the vascular system of plants.
Aster yellows causes unearthly distortions in many plants, including coneflowers and phlox.
Not all plants can become infected with aster yellows, but many annuals, perennials, vegetables and weeds are affected by it, including asters, carrots, chrysanthemums, coreopsis, cosmos, daisies, dandelion, marigolds, onions, petunias, potatoes, thistle and tomatoes. Aster yellows isn’t a new disease. It’s just worse this year than it normally is for reasons experts are still pondering. Hot weather seems to have something to do with it.
Aster leafhoppers are the reason why the disease travels through gardens so quickly. They transmit the disease from plant to plant when they feed on infected plants and suck up sap that contains the phytoplasma. After a short incubation period in their tiny bug bodies (the leafhoppers are not harmed), the microorganisms multiply and the insects spread the disease further as they feed.
It’s hard to do, but you really should rip infected plants out and throw them away.
The symptoms of aster yellows vary from plant to plant. But most of the time you’ll notice that infected plants look stunted and distorted in weird ways. Foliage can be yellow and flowers often look yellow or a spooky shade of green. Seeds and fruit don’t develop. You might also see spindly stems and flower stalks. It’s not a pretty sight.
The biggest bummer, though, is that once a plant has aster yellows it can’t be cured. You’ve got to rip the whole plant out and throw it away. I know, I know. I don’t do that either. I just cut off the infected part of my coneflowers and let the rest of the plant that looks good stay. But that is a bad idea. Yes, I get to enjoy the relatively normal-looking parts of my alien, mutant coneflowers. But by allowing those plants to stay in the garden, I’m ensuring that aster leafhoppers will continue to spread the disease to other susceptible plants in my yard and my neighbors’ yards.
It’s really the same tough reality crew members on spaceships in sci-fi films often face. You remember the plot. They all know that their friend was infected by some horrible monster creature thing down on the planet they just visited without wearing proper protective gear (what’s up with that?). And they all know it’s only a matter of time before a baby monster creature thing bursts out of their friend’s chest and tries to infect them all. But, hey, for the moment the friend seems mostly fine, so why not let the poor sot live, right? We know how that story ends.
So let’s all vow to rip out plants infected with aster yellows—at least by the end of the season when we cut down plants for fall. It’s fine to throw these infected plants in the compost because the phytoplasma dies when the plant dies. Not all plant diseases work that way. Unfortunately, this harsh step won’t guarantee that aster yellows won’t come back again next year because infected leafhoppers are likely to still be around or you could inadvertently bring an infected plant home from the garden center. I think I’m finally going to give up on coneflowers all together. I like them, but I’m tired of knowing there’s a mutant, green monster lurking behind those pretty purple flowers.
Note: This post ran this week as my Everyday Gardener column in Minneapolis’ Southwest Journal.
What Do Our Gardens Say About Us?
Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are.
— Alfred Austin
I don’t know enough about the English poet Alfred Austin to understand why he thought he could divine who, or more precisely, “what”, someone was simply by looking at their garden. But he makes an interesting point. Having toured many more gardens than I usually do this summer, I’ve really been struck by the vast differences in the look and feel of people’s yards.
Modern straight lines vs. curving cottage beds, shady oases vs. sun-drenched plots for edibles and brightly colored perennials, cherubs and ornate statuary vs. gnomes and silly flamingos. And probably not surprisingly, a near tie between the number of gardeners who like plant tags and the ability to see the soil between each plant and those who would never consider plant tags and prefer a more wild, overlapping look.
What would Austin make of this? “What” are these people? Does orderly equal neatnik, control freak or professional organizer while wild signifies some kind of messy, disheveled, devil-may-care personality? Maybe. But that seems too simple since, once you get to know most people, they often turn out to be much more complicated than they first appeared. He must have meant something more. Might we consider how each gardener’s parents and grandparents gardened? Where they grew up? Whether they need to grow food to put food on the table?
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